1. Field of the Invention
A certain aspect of this disclosure relates to an image forming apparatus, an image processing method, and an image processing system.
2. Description of the Related Art Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2002-041401, for example, discloses a technology for transferring image data obtained by scanning an image at an image forming apparatus to a mobile terminal via a network. Such a technology enables a user to easily transfer image data obtained by using a high-performance scanner of an image forming apparatus to a mobile terminal.
However, in an environment where only a mobile communication network employing a packet-based charging scheme is available, transferring image data from the image forming apparatus to the mobile terminal incurs considerable costs. Generally, transferring image data obtained by an image forming apparatus requires a large number of packets. For example, one page of an A3-size color document scanned at a resolution of 400 dpi as a photographic image may have a data size of about 5 MB, and the data size of 100 pages of the same document becomes as large as 500 MB. Accordingly, depending on the fee structure of the mobile communication network, the communication costs may become very high.